If this guy does not get that person of the year thing in Dentist Office Magazine Time, I’ll be shocked. Glenn Beck has nothing on this Australian-born, white-mopped Albino. Single-handedly he created an absolutely new way (for better or worse) of dealing with corporate and governmental interests. Say what you will about the validity/danger of what he does, it ought to be obvious the guy is the first internet folk hero, existing primarily in cyberspace.
He looks pretty good too considering he’s almost 40. With his accent and white hair, he could be a cosmopolitan evil doer. Perhaps the James Bond franchise should use him as a template for their next villain, pairing him with a white cat to stroke as he wreaks havoc on international security. My hope, they put him in the Fallingwater house outside Pittsburgh. Something about Frank Lloyd Wright’s design works well with Julian’s supposed temperament: urbane yet fragile, like the house ought to just collapse, yet it fails due to its inner power.
Cast as a villain in a Bond movie would still portray him in a more flattering light than what the media has given him. Among some of the grosser accusations are of rape (and he’s being questioned, not being sentenced. You’d think otherwise though according to the spin), causing the death of innocents (when his work actually gives concrete numbers of how many people have been killed in endeavors), and coming across rather haughty (the last one is his own damn fault). His treatment, though poor, pales in comparison to what Bradley Manning (alleged source of the leaks) has faced. Reading the New York Times article on him, he got dismissed as someone desperately seeking acceptance rather than focusing on why the leak was important. Mr. Assange got this as well, being asked about his son and divorce, but nowhere as extreme (Manning doesn’t have the option of letting an organization speak on his behalf).
Basically, the focus on Julian appears to be a ruse to focus away from the leaks. The leaks themselves range in terms of how much they shock, and much of it isn’t very surprising, excluding the juicy parts about Tunisia and Saudi Arabia. Had the US Government simply ignored or laughed off the leaks, perhaps there might not be the outpouring of support for this guy on the internet, along with the various DOS (Denial-Of-Service attacks) that such support entails. In short, the response to his work was bungled. Having Newt Gingrich and others calling for his assassination proved stupid as well, along with those calling him a terrorist saying how he should be hunted down like Osama (Julian’s response that since he’ll be treated like Osama, he has about ten years of freedom yet, was a particularly effective barb).
Travelling across the world like a digital nomad, lacking any real home, makes his odyssey that much more interesting. Continually attacking Julian is so incredibly stupid, it is like when people engage somebody trolling: by giving them attention, you only encourage this kind of behavior. How our government fails to understand how free speech (and treason) works is beyond stupid. It is actually embarrassing to have a government that so poorly comprehends the internet besides knowing it’s a series of tubes.
Person of the Year usually needs some controversy to make it stick. I’ve yet to encounter two people with the same reaction of the guy. Going between the extremes of Ron Paul (who adores him) and Sarah Palin (who unsurprisingly misses his point completely), he’s garnered a huge amount of attention. Rather than focus on his leaks and ask how we can stop him, maybe a better question is to ask how are we doing? I mean, this material is leaked to him by those within the system itself and are dissatisfied enough to bring this information to his organization we should be trying harder. People are always going to be unhappy, but not normally to Bradley’s level. If we’re hiding this much anyway, maybe we should ask ourselves why? As Ron Paul eloquently put it:
““In a free society we're supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it.”
I may not always agree with Mr. Paul on most issues but he sort of hit the nail on the head with this. His nine questions are here as well, as further ruminations on what Wikileaks means:
While Julian continues to have this information released, maybe the US can re-evaluate where we’re heading. Is the creation of a paranoid semi-police state really a good idea? Right now it feels like this whole year has been about questioning ourselves and which way our country is going, either with the Tea Party, the Left’s dissatisfaction with Obama, or the abysmal economic growth we’ve been experiencing. Julian basically tore all that away to ask the absolutely fundamental question:
“Are we happy with ourselves?”
I wonder what will be next for him and his Wikileaks organization. There are a few things left he can do in order to raise money for his cause:
1. Leak Nude Pictures of Julian Assange.
2. Get together with Ron Paul and start a buzzband.
3. Find out where Panda Bear’s album is, leak that onto the internet.
4. Host “The Soup”
5. Move to Brazil (via the Brazilian President’s love for him. Plus, extradition rules from there are a bitch).
6. Arrange to leak the documents on Myspace, finally get people to visit Myspace again. I feel that getting corporate sponsorship might help.